Posts Tagged ‘Obamacare’

House and Senate Republicans have forfeited any claim to ethical behavior. They were sent to Washington to do the people’s business; they make a mockery of their oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office.”

Congressional Republicans are doing anything BUT “well and faithfully discharging the duties” of their offices. They have now voted 33 times to repeal or defund all or part of the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”). Yesterday every one of the House Republicans voted for repeal, along with five Democrats. Before any of the hours of sham debate and the wall-to-wall press and TV coverage, every last one of them knew that their vote would have no effect. None. Nowhere. Never.

For to repeal the ACA, they well knew, after the bill passes the House it would have to be passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, then signed by President Obama. Did any of them expect that the President would sign repeal of his (for better or worse) signature legislation?

Meanwhile, the Senate Republicans are keeping pace with their House colleagues’ renunciation of their Constitutional oath. (more…)

After Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) likened Republicans to Nazis for their opposition to Obamacare, then gave an in-your-face pseudo-apology, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly sanctimoniously slammed Cohen and tut-tutted that nobody on the right would ever compare their opponents to Nazis.

Jon Stewart skewered Kelly and Fox with this segment, titled “24 Hour Nazi Party People,” showing Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, and others calling liberals Nazis, including Bernie Goldberg who did it on her own show last March.

If “they did it first” excused such ugliness we’d have to let Cohen off the hook for his spectacular incivility. But it’s no excuse. Spewing “Nazi” is way beyond the limits, whether done once by a Democrat or over and over by the Fair and Balanced folks at Fox News.

There are lots of reports that Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) apologized for likening the Republican opponents of Obamacare to Nazis, but don’t you believe them. His regret was not for his ugly accusation, but was “that anyone in the Jewish community, my Republican colleagues or anyone else was offended by the portrayal of my comments.”

Kudos to Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, the only people on the left who’ve been willing to say anything against Cohen’s House remarks. Maddow said, “Nothing is like the Nazis,” Schultz said “This can’t be tolerated.”

Tragically, no peep of criticism has come from Cohen’s Democratic colleagues. They remain silent; therefore they approve.

A week ago Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) made an urgent plea for civility in public discourse. He warned,

“Reckless and hateful speech often has a terrible human cost. If the horrific events in Arizona are not enough to modulate our public discourse, it is likely there will be more violence, more deaths.”

Yesterday Mr. Cohen gave his own version of civil discourse on the House floor. Speaking of the opposition of the Republican majority in the House to Obamacare, he likened the other party to Nazis:

“They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie. Just like Goebbels; you say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually people believe it.

“Like blood libel. That’s the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again. And we’ve heard it on this floor; government takeover of health care.”

The new Republican leadership of the House of Representatives opened the new 112th Congress with a reading of the Constitution that they are sworn to support and defend. Some Members on both sides tried to make political hay out of the action, but for the most part it was a bipartisan effort that served to remind all of what they were there for.

But purposely the document they read wasn’t the Constitution of the United States, but an edited, modernized version. The original, housed in the Archives of the United States, spells out the method for apportioning congressional seats in Article I, Section 2:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

“Three fifths of all other Persons.” Those “other Persons” meant slaves. The formula was changed by the fourteenth amendment, which ended slavery and, eliminated the three-fifths language.

Why would anybody bowdlerize the Constitution? Simple—it’s to maintain the fiction that the founders had perfect foresight, and that their language—or their omissions—must be followed slavishly for all time. And so, for example, since they didn’t allow the federal government to require Americans to buy health insurance, then the health care law must be unconstitutional. And so, for another example (more…)

“Nigger!” shouted by a demonstrator at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) as he was leaving the Capitol Saturday. “Faggot!” at Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). Words not enough, a demonstrator spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D., Mo.).

To their credit, some on the right objected. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), called the actions by some protesters “reprehensible.” Amy Kremer, coordinator of the Tea Party Express, told Fox News, “I absolutely think it’s isolated. It’s disgraceful and the people in this movement won’t tolerate it because that’s not what we’re about.”

While nigger and faggot cross the line for Tea Partiers, they may be the logical next step after socialist, communist, and Nazi. If you agree with the so-far-unnamed Republican congressman who shouted “baby killer” from the House floor (more…)